Welcome to 2004. I'm sure you are Happy New Year'd out, so I'll get
right to it.
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In your many great web searches, you've come across a few blogs.
Whether you know what they are, or what they do, you've been to
one. If you don't know how to identify one, that's ok. If you've
used Google, you've been to one.

It is estimated that less than 2% of the world's population knows
what a blog (or weblog) is. Yet Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, and all
other major search engines use their content daily. It is also
estimated that 90%+ of Intenet users have visited a blog, knowingly
or not.

And finally some companies are catching on to the phenomenon. Sony,
usually a big bully when it comes to not allowing the reproducing of
copyrighted images on websites, introduced several free templates
for web designers and bloggers alike. The templates feature
Spiderman, and (of course) a plug for the upcoming Spiderman II
movie. The templates look great, which helps the website owner to
improve his 'look and feel'. At the same time, Sony is getting a
ton of free web marketing.

While this solution probably won't help you in your small business,
I conclude that other ideas may. Do you have an idea for a web
application that would sell easily? Maybe even something that you
could give away for free on your website? Think, more traffic means
more potential customers.

Many web applicatons can be written in PHP, a specialty of
Lighthouse Technologies. Within a short time your idea can be
reality, and maybe even bringing in income. Think about it. Sony
took a hugely growing technology and bent it to their advantage.
You can do it too, even for a small business. Don't dismiss those
ideas. The crazy ones are sometimes the good ones.
---------------------

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So much about META tags!

I've written about META tags in the past, and I thought I'd take
this first newsletter of 2004 to help you expand your search engine
optimization efforts and increase your web hits.

Rule #1: META tags always go in between the HEAD tags on your
website.
Rule #2: NEVER include any line breaks in any META tag!

Most everyone knows the two basic META tags: keywords and
description.

Keywords should be in a descending order of importance. Move your
most important keywords to the front, and don't repeat yourself
(e.g. auto,parts,auto parts,Auto Parts). Keep the list short, to
about 25 keywords. If you cater to more than one ethnic group of
people, consider keywords in other languages. Lastly, eliminate
spaces between the words. Make them "comma" instead of "comma
space".

Descriptions should also be kept short and to the point. Around 100-
125 characters is about the max usable length. Make sure you use a
few important keywords in your description, be informative but brief.

Web designers should include these tags as well:
<meta name="author" content="yourname">
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright 2004, yourname">
<meta name="generator" content="yourname or company">

These three tags may change if you are the owner of the
company/website but not the creator. In that case, the first two
lines would be about the company owner, while the third should be
the creator or the creator's web address.

For visiting robots, you may want to add this line:
<meta name="robots" content="index,follow,noarchive">

Although most robots use the robots.txt file, Google in particular
also pays attention to the third item - noarchive. This tells the
search engine to index the page, but not to cache it. This comes in
handy if you change your page often. Google will then always send
the user to the latest version of the page, not one that it cached.

Latly, you may want to consider these two META tags for our
wonderful Microsoft-controlled world:
<meta name="MSSmartTagPreventParsing" content="TRUE">
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">

The first turns off a feature in MS Internet Explorer which
displays "smart tags", or dynamic links, to your website. These
links can actually send the user to your competition's website. Not
good!

The imagetoolbar tag prevents Internet Explorer 6+ users from
swiping your custom-made graphics by disabling a toolbar. This
toolbar is usually displayed by doing a right-click on a graphic and
saving it to disk. While people can still swipe your graphics, at
least they'll have to go through a little trouble to get it.
Hopefully its enough of a deterrant to keep them away.
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Thanks for reading. I wish you the best in 2004!

Will Hanke
Lighthouse Technologies
www.techlh.com